The present invention relates to systems and methods for providing and dynamically updating information available to a specific customer and, more precisely, to systems and methods for providing and dynamically updating information available to that customer by way of an on-site commerce server embedded within an on-site operations-management server, such as an enterprise resource planning server.
Package delivery services companies are continuously searching for new and better ways to serve their customers. A primary area of attention has been the interface through which customers access the services of the delivery company. With the advent of the Internet, delivery companies have increasingly provided access to their services on-line. Traditional on-line offerings have included ordering basic shipping (e.g., land or “ground” domestic delivery) and communication with customer service representatives.
Package delivery companies have also developed new services and the manner in which they offer their services in response to an increasing sophistication of their customers. Specifically, customers, such as large product companies, have improved their systems for managing product orders received from their customers and managing warehouse operations including inventory control. Hand-in-hand with these improvements, vendors of computer hardware and software have developed advanced operations-management solutions (e.g., servers). Operations-management solutions manage and/or assist in management of some, most, or all of the operations of an entity (i.e., the customer). Foremost of these solutions are enterprise resource planning systems (ERP's), which integrate some, most, or all of the data and processes of a company into a single computer system. ERP's include software and often hardware and usually link various system modules to a unified database.
In recent years, vendors of operations-management systems (including at least one server) and at least one package delivery services company have worked together to provide their common customers (e.g., products companies) convenient access to the services of the package delivery company by way of the operations-management system. For example, some vendors developed modules in their operations-management systems and allotted portions of their unified databases to providing services of the package delivery company. Accordingly, the respective customer can access the services of the package delivery company by way of the same interface of the operations-management system that they use for their other enterprise needs.
A shortcoming of arrangements in which the vendor maintains the module and database through which the customer accesses the services of the package delivery company is the laborious process the vendor must undertake to update data in the module and associated portion of their unified database. The burden of updating data can readily be quantified into terms of increased operation costs, which vendors sometimes pass onto their customers. Exemplary data includes data associated with products provided by package delivery companies, such as new services and new rates for new and existing services. Data updates are required regularly and/or intermittently and sometimes frequently. Updating the data is also challenging for the vendor because they are implementing data prepared by the package delivery company instead of the vendor generating and implementing their own data. Often, update data is generated by the delivery company using data extracts from their remote database (i.e., remote from the customer) and presented to the vendor in large amounts and/or in a somewhat unwieldy specification format. An exemplary data format is a spreadsheet on hardcopy or in an electronic version that is not easily transferable to the package delivery module.
Another shortcoming of arrangements in which the vendor develops and maintains the module through which the customer (e.g., products company) accesses the services of the package delivery company is a lack of uniformity and timeliness at which the new services and data are available. For example, regarding uniformity, a simultaneous release of the same update data from the delivery company to two different vendors for implementation into their respective operations-management systems often results in different times of implementation. Thus, one of the customers may not have access to the same new resources and/or information for many weeks or months. Sometimes, a vendor implements the same update data at widely varying times in the systems they maintain for various customers. One possible solution to this challenge has been to provide update data to vendors in stages or provide advance notices including some structure and substance of upcoming updates. However, under these scenarios, the vendor still has the burden of implementing all of the data at some time. Migrating all of the various customers to a new service or version of a service is very burdensome using traditional methods.
Another example of vendor subjectivity in the activity of implementing new data into the shipping module and unified database is when vendors position the activity lower within their prioritization of feature enhancements than the package delivery company would prefer. For example, although a vendor may be intent on timely implementing update data, they may however determine that their business needs are better served by demoting the activity within their prioritizations. Accordingly, the vendor may implement the data as soon as they decide is feasible or, for example, wait for the next data update from the delivery company so they can implement two consecutive updates at the same time or try only implementing the second of the two updates. In some cases, vendors fail to implement requested changes completely due either to neglect or in consideration of a costs-benefits analysis. Even if a vendor charges their customer for their work updating the system, they are still not relieved of the burden of implementing the updates and of course the customer does not appreciate the added charge.
Further, package delivery companies often set update standards by which vendors are asked to operate within. These requirements can include, for example, accuracy of the information updated in the vendor system compared to the information provided by the delivery company and time targets within which updates should be performed. Accordingly, vendors sometimes face the risk of falling out of compliance with the delivery company. Delivery companies would prefer avoiding reviewing vendor performance under such standards and vendors would prefer avoiding such review and the possibility of falling out of compliance.
An additional shortcoming of having the vendor develop and maintain the module through which the customer accesses the services of the delivery company, also relating to vendor subjectivity, is that sometimes vendors selectively implement data in a manner undesirably to the delivery company. For example, a vendor receiving updates including a new international shipping service and a new hazardous material shipping service for implementation into a module the vendor maintains for a company that makes and sells compact discs, may elect to implement only the international shipping service into the module. Unbeknownst to them, however, the company selling compact discs may indeed have hazardous waste shipping needs, such as regarding by-products of their manufacturing process. Thus, the compact disc company does not receive access to a service that may greatly improve their operations and the package delivery company likely looses revenue because the customer may not be aware of the new hazardous material service offering.
Another shortcoming of arrangements in which the vendor develops and maintains the module through which the customer accesses the services of the package delivery company is the additional work delivery companies usually undertake to verify that the data was implemented correctly. Thus, in addition to the package delivery company creating, bundling, and sending the data to the vendor and the vendor laboriously updating the shipping module in their system, the package delivery company also ensures proper installation and there may be considerable additional work for both parties in the event of an improper data update, whether due to vendor error or an error in the data provided to them.
Several solutions have been proposed to address the challenge of providing up-to-date services and data to shipping customers. One proposed solution is to provide some of the services and data to the customer by way of a remote server of the delivery company. This solution is similar to the traditional access that customers have to the services of the delivery services company through the Internet except that through this vendor-enabled solution the customers can access the on-line offerings via their existing operations-management system and some additional offerings ran from the vendor server. In this way, more wieldy (e.g., accompanied by a lot of data) and/or more frequently updated information (e.g., data associated with real-time tracking of a package during delivery) can be ran from a remote server of the package delivery company while services requiring less data and/or less frequent updates (e.g., data associated with rates for services) can remain on the vendor server. One shortcoming of this proposed solution is that vendors sometimes still maintain responsibility for updating a lot of data. This shortcoming is compounded with the fact that shipping service offerings are increasing rapidly in number and size (i.e., amount of data and business rules associated with the services) and are generally requiring more frequent changes.
Another shortcoming of the proposed solution described in the immediately preceding paragraph is that customers understandably often prefer not to depend heavily on the Internet for critical aspects of their operations—the shipping of products. For instance, a large products company, shipping over 100,000 packages a day, for example, may suffer significantly from an Internet operation or connection problem, even if the problem lasts only for a short period of time during a day. Moreover, Internet latency is a problem. That is, even notwithstanding Internet operation or connection problems, inherent limitations on data transfer speed via the Internet often hinder operations in solutions such as that proposed in the immediately preceding paragraph more than users would prefer.
Additional shortcomings of the proposed solution relate to data privacy/security and corresponding levels of customer confidence. Data associated with the shipping operations of a customer may include sensitive information, which the customer and/or the delivery company would like to keep from unauthorized entities. Exemplary sensitive information includes rates at which a customer is being charged for the package delivery services, client information such as addresses to and from which packages are being sent, and descriptions of the contents of packages. Despite new technologies for protecting transmissions of data over the Internet, customer confidence in on-line data transmissions is kept down because a non-negligible level of insecurity remains.